Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new abstract paintings by Barbara Sternberger. In this body of work titled Emanating, Sternberger embraces the constancy of change and each artwork contains the energetic record of their creation. The artist covers up the previous layers of her marks, obscuring any marks that she considers predetermined aesthetic decisions in favor of the pure expression that resulted from being intensely immersed in the present moment of their making.
Gestural thick lines float amid multi-layered surfaces and appear to simultaneously advance and retreat, grounded by an earthbound color palette of burnt oranges, vibrant ochres and deep blues. The canvases hold accumulations of imagery and the artist’s gestural smudges and marks from previous layers are only faintly legible. These works each read like a palimpsest, a manuscript on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing, bearing visible traces of its earlier form. Sternberger continues to record intuitive, energetic moments of time through paint while the canvas acts as a conduit for emanating it back out into the world.
Barbara Sternberger received her MFA from the University of California at Irvine. She lives in Bellingham, Washington and is a part-time lecturer and painting instructor at Western Washington University.
